While EmuParadise doesn't seem to have been hit with any lawsuits yet, site founder MasJ writes in an announcement post that "it's not worth it for us to risk potentially disastrous consequences. I cannot in good conscience risk the futures of our team members who have contributed to the site through the years. We run EmuParadise for the love of retro games and for you to be able to revisit those good times. Unfortunately, it's not possible right now to do so in a way that makes everyone happy and keeps us out of trouble."

EmuParadise will continue to operate as a repository for legal downloads of classic console emulators, as well as a database of information on thousands of classic games. "But you won't be able to get your games from here for now," as MasJ writes.

Give us other options

Since founding EmuParadise in 2000, MasJ says EmuParadise has faced threatening letters, server shutdowns, and numerous DMCA takedown requests for individual games. Through it all, he says he was encouraged by "thousands of emails from people telling us how happy they've been to rediscover and even share their childhood with the next generations in their families."

Those kinds of emails highlight just how hard it can be to get legal access to vast swaths of video game history in a convenient, downloadable form. Efforts like Nintendo's now-defunct Virtual Console and periodic re-release collections fill in some of the gaps, often for the most popular games. Still, the game industry doesn't have anything close to the equivalent of Spotify's deep collection of easily streamable music, or the tens of thousands of downloadable movies and TV shows available on iTunes and its ilk.

Further Reading

For the vast majority of early gaming history, downloading a ROM from a site like EmuParadise is often the only feasible method of accessing the game at all, short of tracking down an original cartridge and hardware. As Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi put it in a 2016 GDC talk, "we demonized emulation and devalued our heritage. We've relegated a majority of our past to piracy."

While legal threats can have a chilling effect on individual ROM sites, stopping the illicit distribution of classic gaming ROMs wholesale is likely an unwinnable game of Internet Whac-A-Mole. As it stands, Archive.org still hosts thousands of ROMs on consoles ranging from the Atari 2600 to the original PlayStation, part of the site's effort to encourage "commentary, education, enjoyment, and memory for the history they are a part of," as collection manager Jason Scott puts it.

Until the industry can come together to provide convenient, legal access to these emulated games, illicit ROM distribution will continue to represent the main access point for that history to a large portion of the general public. It's high time for classic gaming's gatekeepers to sort out the rights issues and loosen their grip on these legacy libraries in order to offer a viable alternative to piracy's de facto monopoly on much of gaming history.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

Although not perfect, Microsoft actually endorses the recreation of abandoned games via its own Game Content Usage rules. It prevents developers from making money directly using the game's assets, but allows for full modification and distribution as long as trademarks are respected. In this manner, gamers have resurrected Microsoft's Age of Empires Online game in its entirety, including custom scenarios and online multiplayer.

Barbara Streisand Effect in full swing. I've been focusing on playing my legitimate games purchased on Steam for so long, I forgot about my love of the classics like FFVI. Now that it is in the news, feeling the itch to give Kefka another ass whoopin', and all this lawsuit does is reiterate to people that emulators and ROMS exist.

Move highlights the lack of legal access options for much of gaming's history.

or why the current copyright duration is bullshit.

What happens to copyright when a franchise is involved?

For instance, it would be ideal that we could freely access games that are 20 years old, no longer sold with no apparent plans for a remake. Or just... you know, be able to backup your own games in case your son decides it's a fun idea to play Frisbee with the bluray of your favorite game.

But what about franchises that are still successfully used to launch new games?

As usual, piracy is a service problem. If gaming platforms would use their platform to provide universal access to their aging intellectual property as opposed to performing variably incompetent forms of the Disney vault strategy, we would be buying from the companies instead of trying to use third-party emulation services.

For example, instead of shelling out over and over for bullshit like the SNES Classic or the Virtual Console, why can I not just pay Nintendo for a permanent license to the games I want, or a subscription to have unlimited access to the entire SNES library, and access them in a way that isn't subject to platform decay and is easy to buy and use? That would be way better than dealing with the hassle of emulators and obtaining a ROM collection through the internet.

When you make it as inconvenient and annoying as possible to buy your product, why wouldn't I just get it from a third party service?

Copyright law needs to be changed so that any copyright is invalidated if the item in question is not easily available for purchase. If the owner is no longer selling the item, he is clearly not interested in earning more money from it, thus there is no reason to enforce copyright anymore.

The other thing that this move does is that it essentially discourages ROM hacking or modification efforts entirely. I mean, even if you yourself legally own a copy of a game that you wish to modify or bugfix (as many games from before updates were available have serious bugs that have since been patched thanks to this), what's the sense in distributing the patch you create when nobody can obtain a copy of the file to apply that patch?

And, by extension, how much farther removed is emulation in general? Let's not forget that were it not for the efforts of the community over time in developing emulators, it's extremely likely that the legit virtual console stuff available now would not even exist, or certainly would not exist in the form it is now.

Barbara Streisand Effect in full swing. I've been focusing on playing my legitimate games purchased on Steam for so long, I forgot about my love of the classics like FFVI. Now that it is in the news, feeling the itch to give Kefka another ass whoopin', and all this lawsuit does is reiterate to people that emulators and ROMS exist.

Do try and stop him before he destroys the world this time, will you? My compatriots in South Figaro and I would really love it if we could just not do the whole Light of Judgment thing this time.

When the pirated version is vastly superior to the form of the product the company provides, why would I ever pay for it, if the companies in question have even deigned to provide any legitimate consumer access to the product at all?

Emuparadise always seemed one of the most brazen because you could easily download zipped packs of full console libraries, ISOs for relatively recent consoles, and links to torrent packs of full libraries for the generations with larger files.

I know this because I have the full Sega catalog and the full Nintendo catalog from NES to DS and a decent chunk of the Wii. And then some random PS1/PS2/Xbox ISOs

They won't let you buy the older awesome games you go looking for other than being gouged on Ebay.

They make you rebuy the same games over and over instead of giving you a license. "Why yes, I'd like to buy Legend of Zelda again for $5. Buying it for the 5th time seems desirable to me sir!"

And they won't give you a way to enjoy modern conveniences like save states which really enhance some of the older games that are really hard or really long without save file capability.

For an industry that is currently complaining about the costs of AAA gaming production and how much work needs to be done to make games profitable, they sure seem to be willing to ignore a very large pile of money.

Copyright law needs to be changed so that any copyright is invalidated if the item in question is not easily available for purchase. If the owner is no longer selling the item, he is clearly not interested in earning more money from it, thus there is no reason to enforce copyright anymore.

What about when the burden of the cost of a perpetual storefront exceeds what a single struggling artist is able to sustain? Should they just abandon their art to be seized by corporations to mine for profit they see no part of?

We could (ideally) implement methods where content is still available somewhere but a percentage of the profit goes towards the copyright owner. Here for instance, people would still pay for ROMs to play them if given the chance, but they aren't even given the chance at all.

It is really screwed up though, when struggling artists get ruined by people copying their work. Met a homeless guy a few months ago who had brought his stuff to international shows a few times, but now prints of his work are available on eBay. He can't leverage copyright claims because of something related to him being a native American, and homelessness is the result

When the pirated version is vastly superior to the form of the product the company provides, why would I ever pay for it, if the companies in question have even deigned to provide any legitimate consumer access to the product at all?

Found the thief.

So what you're saying is, when the stolen product is better than the legitimate product the company provides, why would you ever pay for the legitimate product.

Are you for real?

What if a television in a store is better than the one you have at home?

What if you can't afford it? Why would you ever pay for it, if the company in question doesn't even deign to provide it at a cost you can afford? That would justify breaking into and robbing the store?

Move highlights the lack of legal access options for much of gaming's history.

or why the current copyright duration is bullshit.

What happens to copyright when a franchise is involved?

For instance, it would be ideal that we could freely access games that are 20 years old, no longer sold with no apparent plans for a remake. Or just... you know, be able to backup your own games in case your son decides it's a fun idea to play Frisbee with the bluray of your favorite game.

But what about franchises that are still successfully used to launch new games?

Here's a different way of thinking about that:Franchises typically profit from some social scaling effects, either just by the society talking about it or by integrating the product into social events. By doing that the society elevates the value of the product above it's inherent value without these effects.I'm perfectly fine with subjecting old titles of active franchises to short copyrights as well. It's a way of giving back some of the enhanced value to the society.

Copyright law needs to be changed so that any copyright is invalidated if the item in question is not easily available for purchase. If the owner is no longer selling the item, he is clearly not interested in earning more money from it, thus there is no reason to enforce copyright anymore.

What about when the burden of the cost of a perpetual storefront exceeds what a single struggling artist is able to sustain? Should they just abandon their art to be seized by corporations to mine for profit they see no part of?

And when does that happen in the real world? If we're talking about video games, how many that anyone cares a whit about are produced by a single sad little artist toiling away in his parent's basement? What is a single struggling artist going to produce that they can't afford to make available via Etsy or Ebay or any of the many other ways to sell things online for almost no overhead? You're saying they can't make enough money off sales to keep a blog up that says "Email me at myemail@gmail.com if you want to buy a license to my Super Mega Killer Product?" Then of what use is the copyright and just how many people are going to be pirating the item? What's the actual harm if someone does?

Copyright law needs to be changed so that any copyright is invalidated if the item in question is not easily available for purchase. If the owner is no longer selling the item, he is clearly not interested in earning more money from it, thus there is no reason to enforce copyright anymore.

What about when the burden of the cost of a perpetual storefront exceeds what a single struggling artist is able to sustain? Should they just abandon their art to be seized by corporations to mine for profit they see no part of?

We could (ideally) implement methods where content is still available somewhere but a percentage of the profit goes towards the copyright owner. Here for instance, people would still pay for ROMs to play them if given the chance, but they aren't even given the chance at all.

It is really screwed up though, when struggling artists get ruined by people copying their work. Met a homeless guy a few months ago who had brought his stuff to international shows a few times, but now prints of his work is available on eBay. He can't leverage copyright claims because of something related to him being a native American, and homelessness is the result

The art world is so fucked up it's unlikely he would make money even if his art wasn't being sold on eBay. Essentially, everything is set up so all the money goes to the studios, and they get to control what is and isn't considered "fine art", which is a stupid and arbitrary term that they bestow arbitrarily. Literally arbitrarily.

A studio will buy cheap art from an unknown artist, and simply by doing so cause its value to skyrocket. Then it gets bought by another studio, for an even greater price, who sells it to another studio for a greater price, who sells it to another studio for a greater price, and so on and so forth, forever. The studios make tons of money, the rich people buying the artwork make tons of money, but the artists get squat. If they're super, super, super lucky, maybe this all happens while they're still alive and they can leverage some of that value magicked out of thin air for themselves, but this is exceptionally rare.

Basically, "fine art" is bullshit. You're much better off going to your local coffee shop (or wherever local artists get featured in your town), and buying something off the wall. The artist is supported directly, and the work is just as good as what's in the finest studios in the world. And you'll know that you bought it because you like it, not because some yuppie you'll never meet deigned to apply the label "fine art" to it.

When the pirated version is vastly superior to the form of the product the company provides, why would I ever pay for it, if the companies in question have even deigned to provide any legitimate consumer access to the product at all?

YES. This especially applies to anti-piracy 'features' that punish paying customers. I ran into this problem with the 1st Dragon Age game back in '09. Yeah, I pirated it (being broke at the time), but played through it with all of the DLC. A couple years later, I bought it, put in a few dozen hours, and suddenly my games started to have problems. Ironically enough, my saved game was bugged due to an anti-piracy feature that had the game 'phone home' when it started. For whatever reason, the game was able to contact EA/Bioware and was 'verified', but the DLC wasn't. The game loaded anyways. The next time I played it, the DLC was able to phone home, but because it had a problem previously it started wreaking havoc with my saved game (causing DLC mission progress to become locked, unusable, or just disappear entirely).

The pirated version of the game ran perfectly, while the legit copy ran like crap because EA/Bioware just had to make it so it punished players if there was a problem phoning home.

They make you rebuy the same games over and over instead of giving you a license. "Why yes, I'd like to buy Legend of Zelda again for $5. Buying it for the 5th time seems desirable to me sir!"

And they won't give you a way to enjoy modern conveniences like save states which really enhance some of the older games that are really hard or really long without save file capability...

Can't really argue about the rebuying Zelda issue, but regarding save states... Both the NES Classic and SNES Classic support save states. The SNES Classic even has a "rewind" feature that lets you go back a bit in a game (how far depends on the game):https://kotaku.com/we-played-snes-class ... 1798161324

There really needs to be a provision in copyright law that if a publisher who has perviously published something sits on it for some extended period of time and doesn't make it available for sale (for a reasonable market price) that some or all of the work becomes public domain. As in making the ROMs available for $1,000 each doesn't count.

I wanted to get a bunch of NES games, so I bought the NES Classic. If they weren't available for sale I'd have downloaded them instead.

Copyright law needs to be changed so that any copyright is invalidated if the item in question is not easily available for purchase. If the owner is no longer selling the item, he is clearly not interested in earning more money from it, thus there is no reason to enforce copyright anymore.

What about when the burden of the cost of a perpetual storefront exceeds what a single struggling artist is able to sustain? Should they just abandon their art to be seized by corporations to mine for profit they see no part of?

We could (ideally) implement methods where content is still available somewhere but a percentage of the profit goes towards the copyright owner. Here for instance, people would still pay for ROMs to play them if given the chance, but they aren't even given the chance at all.

It is really screwed up though, when struggling artists get ruined by people copying their work. Met a homeless guy a few months ago who had brought his stuff to international shows a few times, but now prints of his work is available on eBay. He can't leverage copyright claims because of something related to him being a native American, and homelessness is the result

The art world is so fucked up it's unlikely he would make money even if his art wasn't being sold on eBay. Essentially, everything is set up so all the money goes to the studios, and they get to control what is and isn't considered "fine art", which is a stupid and arbitrary term that they bestow arbitrarily. Literally arbitrarily.

A studio will buy cheap art from an unknown artist, and simply by doing so cause its value to skyrocket. Then it gets bought by another studio, for an even greater price, who sells it to another studio for a greater price, who sells it to another studio for a greater price, and so on and so forth, forever. The studios make tons of money, the rich people buying the artwork make tons of money, but the artists get squat. If they're super, super, super lucky, maybe this all happens while they're still alive and they can leverage some of that value magicked out of thin air for themselves, but this is exceptionally rare.

Basically, "fine art" is bullshit. You're much better off going to your local coffee shop (or wherever local artists get featured in your town), and buying something off the wall. The artist is supported directly, and the work is just as good as what's in the finest studios in the world. And you'll know that you bought it because you like it, not because some yuppie you'll never meet deigned to apply the label "fine art" to it.

Yeah...making a living as an artist (just producing and selling your own stuff) is nigh-impossible. Completely unrelated to the rest of the thread, but: BGI would be great because these artists could share their work AND live without needing to work meaningless jobs soon taken by robots. Better use of their time anyways...

Copyright law needs to be changed so that any copyright is invalidated if the item in question is not easily available for purchase. If the owner is no longer selling the item, he is clearly not interested in earning more money from it, thus there is no reason to enforce copyright anymore.

What about when the burden of the cost of a perpetual storefront exceeds what a single struggling artist is able to sustain? Should they just abandon their art to be seized by corporations to mine for profit they see no part of?

We could (ideally) implement methods where content is still available somewhere but a percentage of the profit goes towards the copyright owner. Here for instance, people would still pay for ROMs to play them if given the chance, but they aren't even given the chance at all.

It is really screwed up though, when struggling artists get ruined by people copying their work. Met a homeless guy a few months ago who had brought his stuff to international shows a few times, but now prints of his work is available on eBay. He can't leverage copyright claims because of something related to him being a native American, and homelessness is the result

The art world is so fucked up it's unlikely he would make money even if his art wasn't being sold on eBay. Essentially, everything is set up so all the money goes to the studios, and they get to control what is and isn't considered "fine art", which is a stupid and arbitrary term that they bestow arbitrarily. Literally arbitrarily.

A studio will buy cheap art from an unknown artist, and simply by doing so cause its value to skyrocket. Then it gets bought by another studio, for an even greater price, who sells it to another studio for a greater price, who sells it to another studio for a greater price, and so on and so forth, forever. The studios make tons of money, the rich people buying the artwork make tons of money, but the artists get squat. If they're super, super, super lucky, maybe this all happens while they're still alive and they can leverage some of that value magicked out of thin air for themselves, but this is exceptionally rare.

Basically, "fine art" is bullshit. You're much better off going to your local coffee shop (or wherever local artists get featured in your town), and buying something off the wall. The artist is supported directly, and the work is just as good as what's in the finest studios in the world. And you'll know that you bought it because you like it, not because some yuppie you'll never meet deigned to apply the label "fine art" to it.

Speaking as an artist that has sold artwork on a coffee shop wall, I concur with this statement.

When the pirated version is vastly superior to the form of the product the company provides, why would I ever pay for it, if the companies in question have even deigned to provide any legitimate consumer access to the product at all?

Found the thief.

So what you're saying is, when the stolen product is better than the legitimate product the company provides, why would you ever pay for the legitimate product.

Are you for real?

What if a television in a store is better than the one you have at home?

What if you can't afford it? Why would you ever pay for it, if the company in question doesn't even deign to provide it at a cost you can afford? That would justify breaking into and robbing the store?

You absolutely did not understand what I said at all, much less provide an argument that refutes it.

Let's just ignore the assertion in your statement that copying is equivalent to stealing (though it isn't), and address where you went wrong in not understanding my point.

What I'm saying is, the situation is more like:

1. Download a copy of the product in question, or get fucked, because the product isn't even legally available to purchase, or;

2. Download a vastly superior version of the product that is unlimited in every way, or pay for a version that has far less features, far more inconvenient to use because it's locked to a platform, and by the way, it's designed to break once the new platform comes out in two years so you have to buy the exact same product again for no reason. In this scenario, you're literally paying just to get screwed by the company.

If I have the choice between a free product or no product in any share or form for any price, I choose product.

If I have the choice between screwing the company or getting screwed by the company, I will screw the company.

If I had the choice between a mediocre free product and a great paid product, I'd pay for the product. Unfortunately, I don't get that choice, and I only get the first two choices, and it's the company's own fault.

The money was never the problem. It's the availability and quality of what I'm paying or not paying for that's the problem.

Copyright law needs to be changed so that any copyright is invalidated if the item in question is not easily available for purchase. If the owner is no longer selling the item, he is clearly not interested in earning more money from it, thus there is no reason to enforce copyright anymore.

What about when the burden of the cost of a perpetual storefront exceeds what a single struggling artist is able to sustain? Should they just abandon their art to be seized by corporations to mine for profit they see no part of?

You understand you just contradicted yourself, right? There's either money to be made, and thus the owner can continue to provide service and access to the title, or there's no money to be made, and thus no corporation in the world will touch the title with a 50' pole. It's one or the other.